View article

Social scientists spend a great deal of time crafting and testing theories of the State and its relation to economic development, but this work has little obvious influence in the work of international investment lawyers. Indeed, many of the contributions in this book on the Role of the State in Investor-State Arbitration, while representing valuable tools for lawyers and policymakers, consider the State primarily in its practical dimension as a respondent or treaty negotiator. International lawyers certainly work with a concept of the State, but it often consists of little more than the criteria of statehood (population, territory, government and independence) expressed in the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States. 1 These criteria say little to nothing about how modern administrative States should or do interact with economic and political actors within their territories. Certainly, some arbitrators and treaties defer to …